By Adam Kirdzik, Product Planning Manager, Reynolds and Reynolds
How Texting Advances Your Service Department
In the last decade, the number of texts sent across the board has increased by 7,000 percent. Used by people of all ages, texting has surpassed email and phone calls as the most used feature on a smartphone. With a 98 percent open rate, texting has proven to be an effective and efficient communication tool for businesses to contact their customers. When it comes to notifying customers that their vehicle is ready for pickup, they prefer a text alert more than any other communication method. Additionally, a recent JD Power study showed texting also increases customer loyalty.
Text notifications can also help to increase upsells and improve internal communication. You have a greater chance of capturing upsells by alerting a customer of repairs needed while their vehicle is still in the technician’s bay. Text messages can also speed up the repair process by alerting the right person (i.e. service advisors, managers, technicians) when an action is needed for a repair order.
With so many reasons to implement a texting solution in your service department, it’s hard to argue now isn’t the right time.
Rules to Follow
As you start implementing texting in your service department, keep in mind the regulations and laws businesses need to follow. Your dealership must comply with all regulations stated in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), especially when getting consent from the customer.
Before sending text messages, a business must get the customer’s consent and provide clear information on what they’re signing up for. Companies that send texts to customers who never opted-in are liable to lawsuits.
The largest Jiffy Lube franchisee in the U.S., for example, settled a class-action lawsuit for $47 million after texting customers without consent. Using phone numbers that were available from previous invoices, they sent customers an offer for a discount on an oil change. None of the customers who received the offer had opted-in to the text messages – a simple, but costly, mistake.
InstantCarOffer.com made a similar mistake when advertising to customers who received unsolicited texts from the company, resulting in a $1.45 million class-action settlement. The main difference is the company used phone numbers taken from Craigslist ads the plaintiffs had previously posted.
The common factor for both of these lawsuits goes back to violating simple consent rules set by the TCPA that can easily be followed.
Customers have made it clear to businesses that they prefer texting over other forms of communication, so now is the time to implement compliant and monitored texting in your dealership. With 67 percent of customers preferring texts, but only three percent of dealerships implementing a texting solution in service, this simple feature could mean a significant advantage over your competitors. Just don’t forget to play by the rules.
About the Author
Adam Kirdzik is a product planning manager for parts and service applications at Reynolds and Reynolds.
